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:
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 : Created on Nov. 2, 2005 : Last modified Nov. 2, 2005 : (permalink)
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 : Created on Nov. 2, 2005 : Last modified Nov. 2, 2005 : (permalink)
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 : Created on Nov. 2, 2005 : Last modified Nov. 2, 2005 : (permalink)