In addition to sporadically updating this blog, I write program notes for classical music ensembles. Part of the reason my posting schedule is erratic is that summer is my busy season; many orchestras like having all notes for their entire season in one booklet, so I have to write them well before their first concert in the fall. When researching my own notes, I sometimes consult program notes by other people, and too often I find examples of how
not to write about music.
When researching a piece by Henry Purcell, I found a sentence that made me facepalm:
Purcell's early death, at the age of thirty-six, not only cut short one of the most promising of careers, but also sidetracked the development of a specifically English musical style until Elgar and then Britten emerged some two centuries later.
This was published for one of the world’s most prestigious ensembles, the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra! My home city should do better than this.
