Several major projects have come to completion in the last week and I’m absolutely thrilled to be back on the blogging circuit. Expect regular updates here and on the Collaborative Piano Blog.

Some assorted links to start off your week:

On Music - Derren Brown: Derren’s thoughts on the progress of Western music and what was lost through the 19th century are ideas that I hadn’t considered before (via Sovereign Professional):

Bach’s music needs to be unlocked; its emotional content, when discovered, is somehow in and of itself, and uniquely musical. Much of it is deeply confessional. By contrast, Romantic music now seemed to create a broader emotional landscape: that of falling in love, spending a night on a bare mountain, suffering in turmoil or throwing oneself off a parapet. Instead of experiencing those things for ourselves, we are given music that stirs and excites the corresponding emotions within us. Thus the refrains of the Romantics are often more accessible, yielding their power more or less immediately. Those of us who prefer the earlier mode might even say this emotional mode became a mere substitute for experience, and that the unique, private experience of music was diminished.

Useful Laws of the Land: This Collaborative Fund post looks at 8 laws that are applicable to many fields. As a blogger, I learned #4 the hard way, but am still in the process of internalizing #6.

The Pianist’s ABC: Jenna Ristillä’s compendium of 26 items of interest to pianists runs the gamut of things we encounter on a regular basis:

Question, is "pianist" really your profession? Love it. Yes, yes it is. I live in this elitist cultural bubble where my biggest problems are whether Brahms intended the crescendo to begin from the middle or the end of the bar, and am I going to die of poverty and malnutrition this year or the next.

Comments: Rebecca Toh writes about the thrill of getting blog comments, once the mainstay of online discussion, relegated to the margins with the rush to social media, and making a comeback with the return of many of us to blogging.

From the playlists of Detroit/Windsor-based soprano Aimee Clifford, some exceptionally well-aging electronica with Wax’s No. 30003 (B):