Other Music Blogs

Alex Ross, the music critic for the New Yorker and author of several widely-read books on music including The Rest Is Noise put up a big list of music blogs, so I thought I would have a look at them. It's a long list, so I'll just pick out a few here and there.

• Being a guitarist, the first one I had a look at was Paul Viapiano. This is the only blog that Alex lists as being about the guitar. The last post was put up on April 4, 2011, fifteen months ago. The last three posts were a defence of unions, a meandering one about writing and one about photography. Nothing about music, let alone about the guitar.
• Under musicology, Alex links to The Taruskin Challenge, an on-going discussion between two grad students as they read through Taruskin's Oxford History of Western Music that I have mentioned many times. I sampled a few posts and it seems a very intelligent project. They seem to have come to the end of their posting in February 2012.
• The first blog listed in the musicology section is Dial "M" for Musicology. However good this might have been, the last post was June 25, 2010.
• Music Perceptions is quite up to date with the most recent post on July 6, 2012. That post is a brief critical comment on the discussion of Cage's music in Kay Larson's book, Where The Heart Beats. Several preceding posts are a discussion of the same book. A sampling of other recent posts shows a focus on new music.
• Musically Miscellaneous Mayhem has some posts on the most recent meeting of the American Musicological Society. Posts come few and far between, though.
• Songs You Taught Me is a pop-oriented blog by Sasha Frere Jones that has mostly photos and songs with occasional brief comments. Posting seems fairly frequent.
• Pianist Jonathan Bliss' blog has one or two posts a month, but they are extended, very thoughtful, ruminations on some very interesting questions. The last one is about the Beethoven late quartets and piano sonatas and the source of the differences between them. Very interesting and informed!

This was a fairly random and very sketchy look at a few of the many, many blogs he listed. Alex needs to update his list though, for two very compelling reasons. Some of these blogs are barely active and he missed The Music Salon!