The Geometry of Music
A new way of looking at chords and music. Well, new-ish. Or maybe, not so much.
Wes Phillips
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It Must Be Art
It's a paper turntable. I'm sure that Mikey Fremer will be contacting the artist for one to go next to his Nixie clock.
Record Making With Duke Ellington
What a score! Here's a promotional short for Irving Mills' Master and Variety labels that shows us Ellington in the studio. Amazingly, the process of record manufacture hasn't changed substantially since 1937.
Language and Numbers
Speakers of English and Chinese apparently process numbers differently. I'm fascinated for three, no, four, . . . uh, many reasons.
Mozart's Widow: Photo A Hoax?
Several folks make the case—Agnes Selby, author of Constanze, Mozart's Beloved does so most emphatically. Sound And Fury has it all covered.
The Battle of the Somme From the Other Side
George Kerevan reviews Christopher Duffy's Through German Eyes: the British and the Somme 1916, which sounds like a corker. In the first 24 hours of that battle, Britain lost more men than in the Crimean, Boer, and Korean wars combined.
Jack the Ripper: Case Solved?
Maybe so. I think I prefer Michael Dibdin's solution in The Last Sherlock Holmes Story, but fiction is frequently more fun than fact.
Music In Literature
Over at The Independent, Jessica Duchen lists her favorite works of literature that prominently feature music. Mirroring Heine, she starts out, "Music begins where words end," which is more or less true—after all most writing about music sucks the juice right out of it.
Mickey Spillane Dies
Jeff Wong passed along this obit, which I find interesting for all kinds of reasons. Mickey Spillane, the creator of Mike Hammer, was a Jehovah's Witness?
Cortés the Killer?
Well yes, obviously—but Mexican epidemiologist Rodolfo Acuña-Soto thinks that the 16th Century plague that reduced the Aztec population from 22 million to 2 million was not smallpox brought over by the Spaniards. Aztec historians of the time referred to it by a different name than smallpox, with which they were familiar(!), and, after 12 years of research, Acuña-Soto concurs.