I won’t have a lesson on Wednesday –  instead, I’ll be attending the funeral of a friend’s father.  So that means I’ll have to wait another week to start in on the Beethoven I’ve been anticipating so wildly;  the extra week I forced myself into with Gavotte by Lully will become two.  Of course I still have tons to work on – with that and all my pieces.  I’m still learning to hear the minor scale that features so prominently in the Gavotte.  But I am quite excited to play my first Beethoven and am ready to get going!

In the meantime, I’ve subscribed to The Economist online, a replacement for my first love Andrew Sullivan, who has stopped blogging.  The Economist is more expensive, but I’ve long loved its perspective, offering broad, non-American based coverage of the world.  I find its decidedly British disposition charming. This morning’s Economist musical matters include a discussion of the importance of co-production in modern opera – apparently it’s the way opera companies are able to manage the costs of staging the increasingly elaborate productions.  It makes sense – share the costs and divide the labor.  The news site also posted a Valentine’s Day review of a book that catalogues love songs.

Like Andrew Sullivan, I doubt The Economist is going to make its way into Musical Me very often, but it’s where I’ll be getting a lot of my other information about the universe for a while.  It’s an across the pond and slightly less liberal perspective than my other news subscription, The New York Times.

Thanks for reading.

Ryan