About a month before the launch of this site, I started showing test versions to friends and soliciting their comments; no page received half as many as the bio. These were, ahem, wide-ranging, with “very amusing,” on one end of the spectrum, and “are you out of your stinking mind?” on the other. Thought-provokingly in the middle was the following: “I like your bio - but what on earth do you have against accountants??”

I should probably pay more attention to my friends, as the other day no less august a source than the CBC quoted me, eliciting this nettled but polite response. (I would take exception to the description of the Schumann and Grieg concerti as BORING, but I’m not really operating from a strong position here.)

So, the time has come to set the record straight: not only do I have nothing against accountants, I’m very grateful that they exist, doing work that is in fact both necessary and creative, and which, given the avalanche of papers I refer to rather optimistically as my “files,” clearly I have no aptitude for. (I might add that my grandfather was an accountant, but I fear that might have a certain “some of my best friends are jewish”/”not that there’s anything wrong with that” flavor.) And when I contemplate what I put my accountant through annually at tax time, I really have to wonder what I was thinking picking this fight…

So, for the profession-based bigotry, a sincere apology. And suggestions for how I might replace the sentence in question will be welcomed.

“What a humiliation when one stood beside me and heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing, or someone heard the shepherd singing and again I heard nothing, such incidents brought me to the verge of despair, but little more and I would have put an end to my life - only art it was that withheld me, ah it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had produced all that I felt called upon me to produce…”     - Ludwig van Beethoven, from the Heiligenstadt Testament, 1802

I think this explains, far better than I ever could, why playing Beethoven - doing him justice, or at least coming as close as one can - feels like a matter of life-or-death.

Or perhaps even his words are unecessary: the force of his personality, the intensity of his need to say what must be said — these are made plain in his music.

My Beethoven CD was released earlier this month. Just my most recent attempt, in a series which I hope will last a lifetime, to come to terms with the most life-affirming, yet unfathomable music I know to exist.

(A further attempt to explain what this music means to me can be found here.)

blogosphere. Nice to see you.

Truth be told, it has taken me a while to become fully enthusiastic about blogging, in spite of it being an obviously exciting medium. First there’s that word: blog. Blurgh, more like. An apostrophe would help (yes, I know, we’re all busy, and saying “weblog” is just so very time-consuming, but a little acknowledgement of the forsaken “we” would be nice), but it remains a rather dumpling-esque syllable.

Then, there’s the whole self-indulgence perplex. (Case in point.) I mean, I love writing, and I think it’s a great outlet for musicians and the otherwise insane, but is there any reason to inflict the accumulated detritus from one’s brain on an unwitting public? I’m reminded of Dave Eggers’s brother, whose capsule review of Dave’s memoir allegedly read, “Ooh, look at me, I’m Dave, I’m writing a book! With all my thoughts in it! La la la!” Make a few key substitutions, and subtract the compelling life story, and you have this blog, my fearful thinking went…

On top of that, there’s a more personal issue: music is, by a large margin, the greatest passion of my life, and my preferred means of communication. I find it to be much more powerful than words - simultaneously broader in scope and more precise. Why on earth, then, would I use a lesser medium that I am less skilled with? Why dance about architecture?

Well, for many reasons: Because I’ve been moved and educated by things I’ve read in ‘blogs. Beause, as nice as it is as a line, I don’t actually believe that writing about music is just dancing about architecture. Because I think analysis, done well, gives a map of music’s emotional content. Because you’re only as interesting a musician as you are a person, so why pretend that the two can be separated? Because I think it’s good for musicians to engage with the world - on every possible level. And above all, because any method of spreading a passion for music can only be positive.

So here it is, some of my brain’s finest detritus. La la la!