A Minor Update

I feel a bit guilty not to have published a blog post since February. Of course, much time is being taken up by my book. The sort of research findings I used to put into blog posts now goes into my book on Wagner.

But more recently life has been a bit busy. Next came a certain exhaustion from the constant writing. Not only that but a sense that the book seemed to be driving towards an almost inevitable conclusiveness and finality that felt uncomfortable. There was so much secondary source material that was meant to have gone into it that had been left out and there seemed little room left to add them in. The sense of finality in the book felt like a straightjacket. It became important to leave the book, attend to other matters in life, and then return to writing with fresh and ever more critical eyes.

Next, amid all of that came a need to upgrade an ageing hi-fi stereo system for the first time in well over 15 years. It is little like buying a new car. Soon research on Wagner came to be replaced with reading endless hi-fi component reviews and catching up on over a decade's worth of technical developments. At least on returning to writing it will be possible to do so while being able to discover more depths in what were assumed to be well-known recordings. After all, reproduction of recorded music should be about learning and discovering aspects of music that had previously eluded your attention. The technology should be at the service of the music.

At the moment, I am making the transition to the brave new world of computer-based audio. I tend to listen to music while blogging. The writing experience and the listening experience thus tend to become ever more intimately intertwined. That is to say, this temporary diversion into upgrading the hi-fi system and writing/blogging are hardly mutually exclusive aspects of the engagement with music. Suffice to say that being able to listen to the Karajan and Solti recordings of the Wagner Ring cycle at high resolutions around 24-bit/48kHz or 24/96 resolution makes you hear what you thought were familiar recordings in a totally new light.

Hopefully, there will be more updates soon. At the moment the plan is to do more reading around secondary bibliography to add to the book. Probably more primary references coming from Wagner's primary source texts too. It is astonishing how little known his letters are. His complete letters have not even been published yet, which means that even after the book is published critical primary source texts will emerge into the public sphere—astonishing given that Wagner died in the 1880s.

Before that, the chaos and turmoil of life must supervene. The Wagner book is constantly on my mind though and has certainly not been forgotten.