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Years ago, in the midst of my bookshop battles and as some psychological relief, I began writing a comedy which was then entitled ‘Knox Books’ as both a homage to the great Boston bookseller of revolutionary days as well as a ‘play’ on the homophone ‘knocks.’ Such humor can be entertaining to a stressed brain. I staged that concoction as a sit-com of sorts—imagine a ‘Cheers’ for books, if you will, with a cast of odd-ball regulars confronting crises du jour. The crises were, of course, all the concerns of bibliophiles humbled with the usual human defects. Despite a lack of interest in that work beyond my own confines, I’m sure it would have been a hit. . . At least it kept me sane. read more…

In related matters, my new novel, The knight’s tale, a story of the future, is now available in paperback from the mighty Amazon as well as in at least one fine bookshop. This novel was written a few years ago but only available until now in parts on my website. It has been part of an effort since beginning to write again to touch on several themes I believe to be important while playing with the many genres of fiction that I love and have read since I was a boy. With The knight’s tale my interests were the ongoing predilection of human beings for slavery as much as our amazing sense of regeneration, set in a future time when the worst has already happened but the best might be possible once again. The question is a simple one, if history repeats itself because we so often ignore it, might not the future come more than once? The adventure science fiction story was a staple of my youth and I hope I have done it some justice.

How is it that such a great composer as Asger Hamerik can be so forgotten? Can the mediocrity of our age actually be so overwhelming as to ignore even that rare genius who survived the smothering of the ‘modern’ to produce seven wonderful symphonies and an inspirational requiem, several operas and suites, and most of it while teaching right here in America? Perhaps I should be grateful that Rachmaninov and Mahler are still with us. Certainly he is not alone in being ignored while so much mediocrity was raised to set examples for the Broadway/Hollywood nexus of manufactured schmaltz and Götterdämmerung during the last century. Symphony orchestras play with their warhorses again and over again, as if to benumb audiences rather that present another recent example of why the Twentieth Century was such a hell-hole for human creativity as much as it was for the human beings themselves. In the same way that Shakespeare survives endless mutilation on the stage, Beethoven, and too few others can survive such rote, while Joachim Raff, Wilhelm Stenhammar, Johan Svendsen and others of such great imagination have seemingly been buried. Hamerik is my favorite of those I have found on my own. The murder of what has been labeled ‘classical’ music in the twentieth century has now been long successful. The audience has dwindled to so few that without state sponsorship, there would apparently be no full orchestras left, and this excuse is often given for the constant beating of the kettle drums, but that is only after the fact. The aesthetic suicide that was so facilely called ‘the modern’ was first imposed by the academy of the damned that is our educational elite. Yet another accomplishment they can be proud of.

Other than that, I don’t have an opinion on the matter.

http://cphpost.dk/history/the-greatest-danish-composer-america-ever-had.html

http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=309766