Also sprach the composer

I see from the autumn publishing schedules that Paul Griffiths has a new novella being published titled Let Me Tell You. It is written in the Oulipo tradition of constrained writing, and uses only the vocabulary allotted to Ophelia in Hamlet. I know that Paul is not a composer, but he is, among other things, an authority on Stockhausen, scholar of Messiaen and librettist for Tan Dun. So, in the style of my composer as painter thread, it started me thinking about composers as authors of literary works, as opposed to music theory books and memoirs.Here for starters are two composers as authors. The most obvious one is in the photo above. Paul Bowles studied with Aaron Copland, composed a considerable amount of music most of which was for the theatre, and wrote... [read full story]