James Tauber's Blog 2005/11/02
Questioning the Authorship of Bach's D minor Toccata and Fugue
Bach's D minor Toccata and Fugue has long been one of my favourite works. Even though I find the exposition of the fugue oddly simplistic for Bach, I've always loved the drama of the work and its improvisational feel.
So, like Tyler Cowen, I'm shocked to discover that some scholars doubt its authenticity.
The arguments seem to include:
- lack of an autograph manuscript
- use of the term Toccata instead of Prelude
- certain note progressions that "Bach would never have allowed" (I'll have to investigate more)
- unusual final cadence
- double at the octave and other "rule" breaking
- contains many violin idioms (again, I'd like to investigate more)
- simplistic counterpoint (I'll grant them that one)
One theory is that it is an organ transcription of a piece for strings by another composer.
Like many popular articles on scholarly controversy, it's not easy to tell just how mainstream a view it is. It happens all the time in Biblical Studies that one scholar's controversial viewpoint is published in popular article as though it were scholarly consensus.
I'm also dubious of authorship debates in general just because I think the variation within one author can be much greater than the average difference between authors. And isn't a composer allowed to experiment and grow?
As (a sorry excuse for) a composer, I'm very aware of just how different my works from different time periods are.
Still, it's a fascinating theory, and one I might have to dive into a bit more.
by James Tauber : Created on Nov. 2, 2005 : Last modified Nov. 2, 2005 : Categories music : 0 comments (permalink)
There Needs to Be Enough Subject-Verb Agreement
In my previous blog entry I said:
so there need to be enough serviceable customers locally to sustain you
I initially wrote:
so there needs to be enough serviceable customers locally to sustain you
but I decided that "need" has to agree with "serviceable customers".
I confess, though, that I struggled for a while with it (although, as with many cases like this, it's clear to me now that I've thought about it).
by James Tauber : Created on Nov. 2, 2005 : Last modified Nov. 2, 2005 : Categories linguistic_observations : 0 comments (permalink)
The Size of the Perth Market
In an answer to a question asked at the end of my talk on Monday, I suggested that mValent couldn't have been started in Perth because the market is too small. I didn't say the market is too small for software companies in general, just that certain types of software (and markets) require you to be close to the customer in the early stages so there need to be enough serviceable customers locally to sustain you in the initial years. In mValent's case, I don't think that's true of Perth.
I suspect that successful software companies based in Perth generally either have an ideal customer profile that fits more local companies or have a more mature market that is easier to service remotely.
by James Tauber : Created on Nov. 2, 2005 : Last modified Nov. 2, 2005 : Categories entrepreneurship : (permalink)